ACT 2012 crashes when doing a Search

I am a single user of ACT Pro 2012 14.1.108.0 version on a Windows 8.1 computer.

Lately I have been expeirencing a sudden crash in the application when I execute a search in the Search field (top right hand corner of the application).

Also, I tried to uninstall and re-install ACT (above version) on my computer so that if there are any corrupt/damaged files they would be fixed... but it just won't let me uninstall the program. How can I do this?

I hope someone out there will have a solution for these issues. Thanks!